Mass Media

Electronic and Digital Media Paper
Steven Huerta
COM/225
July 11, 2011
Kristina Coleman








Electronic and Digital Media Paper
    Media technology always has been an iatrical part of society, but it was not until the 20th century that media technology exploded on the scene. The television, video recorders, and computers greatly expanded the media realm. The Internet has been the greatest media expansion in history. Cell phone video has been the primary vehicle used in the last 10 years as video reports of breaking news by the everyday civilian.
    As advanced as the electronic and digital media is in today’s age, people have to look back to the origins of media to understand better the tremendous technological growth in recent centuries. Cerulo, Ruane, and Chayko (1992) stated “Early theories of mass media and their effects were closely entwined with the “mass society” perspective, which posits that members of modernized societies have become a mass of atomized, isolated individuals” (p. 110). This early theory of relation to mass society and mass media holds some weight. Society has been dependent on mass media ever since the production of printed material. A high-demand for printed material meant high profits for producers of mass media. Although mass media was viewed as a positive means of distributing material, some did not feel the same. Sproule (1989) stated that “The propaganda critics supposedly visualized social influence as a hypodermic injection of powerful messages directly into a passive and cognitively uniform population” (p. 226). Some people equated mass media as a drug injected in the passive population. On some accounts that is a true statement. Media does, at times, put a spin on a story to push an agenda. Today mass media is the lifeblood of information to the population mass. Individuals can receive media via the Internet, cell phone, television, and radio at anytime of the day.
    Photography was one of... [continues]

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